Is De Zerbi Embracing Vibes? | Romero On His Way Out, LinkedIn Hotspur and Looking Ahead to Brighton with James Maw (Q&A)

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0:51Jack:hello everybody welcome back to rule the rouge podcast james moore my so-called miserable brother in arms how are you yeah how are you doing today yeah i'm okay what are we supposed to be so happy and positive about like having watched spurs this season i'm not sure we can be expected to be too kind of jovial i mean this is this is what i think i was feeling like you know i saw i saw one comment that was like god that's going to be a miserable listen i'm definitely there though hang on right i feel like i'm quite i feel like i'm quite chirpy a lot of the time really if i'm honest with you and you know like we were just saying you're on view from the lane yeah there's there's a dryness there but i think it's mostly always underpinned with with comedy isn't it well that's a very kind of you to say thank you yeah milligan blood no i'm not doing it good lord um the tottenham hotspur squad they've gone out for a nice big lavish dinner this week uh roberta deserve he has taken them out to mayfair i think um i mean didn't he go tudor try and do this yeah i mean it sounds like this was a more kind of high-end establishment i mean presumably if it was in mayfair um do we need to do we need to be angry about this as a starting point should we be like gammonish and furious that they're out eating food when they should be training 24 7 i think i'll be honest i don't even think that reflex even registered for me i just i'm definitely in the place now i'm like look if it works yeah it keeps us up just do it do what you've got to do you know yeah yeah yeah i mean like yeah exactly i mean clearly uh i know we'll come on to kind of the mentality versus tactic stuff a bit later but clearly that like the mental hurdles are kind of more immediate and if yeah if anything can kind of grease the wheels of like getting these players kind of happy and confident again then yeah i'm definitely all for it i mean it's post post sunderland so does erby obviously he's we all know him as this system obsessed intense dude and but after the Sunderland game he said I can be a big brother a father they don't need a coach they don't need to improve football my work is not so much on the pitch because they're good guys and I'm sorry for them um I mean this you know I think there's probably something that's lost in translation now but moreover it feels like Deserby is doing the thing that we wanted, say, Harry Redknapp to do, isn't he?

3:19Jack:He's coming in and being the vibes guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then telling them all to run around a bit or whatever. Yeah, but again, I mean, I think that is kind of what we need to me. That is kind of the more immediate, the more pressing thing. Like, you can't do all the complicated tactical stuff, probably at all now, given the time frame. But if the players are, you know, on their arses and completely miserable and completely bereft of confidence and you can't give them detailed tactical instructions. So irrespective of what he wants to do short, medium, or long-term tactically, you do kind of need to do this thing first.

3:54Yeah, whether going out and having expensive... What do young people eat now these days? What would be the trendy... We're kind of post-Salt Bay, aren't we? It won't be anything like that, presumably.

4:04Jack:I don't know where they'd go, actually. Who's in Mayfair? I'm not cultured enough to know what kind of top chefs are in Mayfair, but I can imagine it's the sort of people you see on like MasterChef, isn't it? You know, Monica Galetti. She got somewhere in Mayfair. Let's say she does. Whatever. Yeah. Do young footballers like that? Who knows? Who knows? I mean, so when, so this was, was it yesterday they went? Is that right? I think so. Yeah. Maybe he took, is there a Nando's in Mayfair? Yeah, this one's a Nando's. I made them go up to order at their thing individually each time. Teamwork. That's it.

4:38Jack:That's part of it. You know, you, you carry the chicken. I'll take the menu. Problem solving as well. The metal chicken. Which sauces does everybody want? Somebody can go and collect those. I mean, this is... This is great stuff. I know, isn't it? This is audio caramel. Are we kind of... Because look, the Sunderland game was okay. The starting lineup, I think, raised a few eyebrows, but Spurs actually played all right. And it feels like the discussion around Tottenham at the moment isn't always in particularly good faith. You know, going into this game, we were told Sunderland are brilliant. Debris has done a great job and they're defying all expectations.

5:23Jack:And then it felt like Spurs actually played pretty well. Sunderland won through a pretty fluky goal. And then afterwards, we're kind of told how terrible Spurs are again. So, you know, people need to make their minds up as to where we're at. are we kind of and are we and is everyone else forgetting that yes Spurs are terrible yes we're in awful form we haven't won since December in the league but Deserby is still a factor that things can change from this point I mean I definitely think we saw I mean it is a relative but we definitely saw improvement on Sunday I think like if I think if you were looking at our time if you're making your half-time assessment during that game I think you'd be relatively positive that they'd moved the ball a bit better they'd kind of seemed to be like in better shape defensively they were a little bit more ambitious looked a little bit more confident on a ball and then obviously you know the second half you concede quite a bad goal that was obviously deflected as well and then you have the kind of the textbook calamity romero kinski injury situation that i mean to be honest probably could have been worse if kinski had to go off of concussion as well.

6:31I mean it. At that point, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah, or whatever.

6:37But I mean, I think if you look at it at the end of the game, Sunderland deserves a win. I don't really think you can argue any differently to that. But Spurs could have got a result with a little bit of luck. And Jack Pitbrook wrote about this for the Athletic off the game, that on a day where Spurs had a little moment of like rather than Sunderland, Spurs could have got like a relatively scrappy 1-0 win up there and it feels like it completely changes everything. Actually being in a game is in a way quite an impressive thing. Like having Sunderland penned in at their place in added time for the last 10 minutes of injury time or whatever, that shouldn't be a big deal for a club like Spurs.

7:21But having seen what we have over the last couple of months, particularly the last maybe six or seven weeks, actually that does feel quite a lot better. Like in the first half of the season, even when they were losing, they were generally losing by like one goal. And that clearly has kind of stretched to being beaten more heavily more often in the last couple of months. But I mean, I thought they kind of defended for the most part quite well really on Sunday. I mean, clearly there's a problem with the runner for the goal where neither, who would it have been? It wasn't, it was Gallagher and someone else.

7:49Jack:I think it was Gallagher, yeah. Yeah, like didn't track the runner and let him have loads of space. But then from there, it's kind of, you know, like a bit of a fortunate deflection. you're not really going to rinse van de Venford I don't think and and pretty much everything else I think they dealt with quite well I mean look it is we are kind of like scraping around for tiny little green shoes but I do think there are a few there do you think that Richarlison and Solanke can play together because there's a part of me that feels in this really scrappy end to things I kind of want Richarlison as that number nine up top and fighting and I I'm not entirely sure what Solanke is giving us in this moment is my hottest take out the back of it.

8:31A lot of kind of the tacticals that are more familiar with De Zerbi than me think that Solanke is like a really good fit for what he wants from a number nine. But I mean, he also think, I mean, he's pretty much said himself, we're not really going to see full fat De Zerbi tactics in this like short window now. So yeah, like Richarlaton is your focal point. I think is just the more effective thing in a limited team. Like if you're playing great football and there's amazing movement and there are wide players who are going to kind of exploit the space that Slanky can create, then fine. But all we're really going to get is scrappy balls into the box and you need the biggest, most physical striker, the best in the air to get on the end of it.

9:12And that is Richarlison out of the free forwards where you've got fit. So I would probably agree with that. That does then ask the question or beg the question, who do you play on the left? You've got Richarlison through the middle. but I guess you've got to tell then so maybe it's not that complicated.

9:24Jack:I guess what I'm trying to get at in a way is where do you think the problem lies right now James? Because Destiny Doggy's come out as well in the past couple of days and said that the fans need to continue to believe the players know that if they win a game it will improve exponentially from that point. There's a lot of talk as you say there as to whether or not De Zerbi is going to play full-fat, deserve-y tactics, or if it is going to be more vibes-based, as we kind of touched on at the top. Is that what it is, though? Is it that the players don't believe? Do they need that confidence, the sort of the fight, the mentality?

10:07Or is it just quite simply, as we sort of all say collectively

10:11Jack:amongst the various different pods and publications, that Spurs are this patchwork side that aren't really assembled and fit for purpose of any real settled plan or any sort of footballing vision that everything is a bit all over the place and hence we are in the mess that we're in and there's there's i don't want to say there's no saving it because that feels really doomerish but it's just it's so hard to get a handle on what the actual problem is obviously aside for the bigger issue of enic not really backing the footballing operation properly yeah i mean i think in the in the short term what you really want is a manager who can find like the most effective way to get this group of players playing like playing to their strengths now obviously the problem is this group of players don't really have that many kind of suitable strengths or useful strengths so there's not like an obvious kind of oh we should be playing these three players in xyz and doing this thing to exploit this whatever strength or weakness or whatever it kind of all feels a bit like you know like you say it's a bit of a kind of cut and shut squad with like you know how if you're kind of ansball players like a few kind of conte players a couple have been brought in since then that wouldn't really fitted at either of those it does kind of feel like this squad isn't really suited to any philosophy as a collective so that that's kind of why that would be the biggest obstacle i think that deserved to be like playing his football straight off the bat in this period of time doesn't mean like you know if he'd come in in september in this situation it'd probably be a bit different he'd probably be trying to like get the players playing something more like his style of football but I think in this instance now it is purely just about results isn't it um and like just being able to defend I think has to be the priority like and that's like I said to be fair that was like probably the biggest improvement we saw last weekend I mean so to answer your bigger question about like how we're in this situation I do think those two things are kind of linked like this is kind of the payback for years and years and years of chopping and changing managers and philosophies and directors of football and whatever else are never really committing to any one vision.

12:17This club's vision has only ever lasted as long as one person has been in a job. They've constantly chopped and changed the kind of players they want to sign in terms of age profiles and personality profiles and stature in the game. And then the kind of players they want on a technical level, on a tactical level, on a physical level, and then obviously the types of managers they've had as well. So you kind of get away with that in the very kind of immediate term. But when you've been doing like flipping backwards and forwards between like several different philosophies or styles over how long, I mean like seven years since Pochettino left.

12:52Like the result is this kind of weird flabby shapeless squads that don't really have any outstanding players or like facets and just needs like a complete rebuild.

13:04Jack:It's kind of the point that V.S. Boas was making. I don't know if you saw he was asked for some reason by somebody it might be Martin Samuel or somebody that was talking to him recently. And he just essentially made the point that Spurs haven't had a clear direction for quite some time. And every time they start to build any form of momentum, they sack whoever is in charge. You know, it comes as no surprise that things are all over the place. But, you know, who cares what he thinks anyway? Gareth Bale, merchant. Tottenham went to Bacchanalia, which is a Mediterranean restaurant in Mayfair. they say a world of Mediterranean delicacies revelry and artistry awaits that's their tagline main courses can be about £130 as well James maybe not for the end of season Spurs podcasters dinner then

14:01Jack:Christian Romero since I last recorded a podcast I think has been all but confirmed that he's going to be out I can't remember if the club have announced it or not, but he's going to be out for the season. Okay. It's highly likely he's going to be out for the season. He'll be back for Argentina in the World Cup, though, conveniently enough, which you would imagine probably means he's played his last ever game for Tottenham Hotspur Football Club. How do you feel about that, first and foremost? How do you feel about Romero being missing from this crunch part of the season? Then I guess we'll open it up to the larger question about his legacy and what kind of dent he'll leave behind, if any at all, at Tottenham.

14:42I mean, I don't buy this suggestion that this could be like a good thing for Spurs, for him being missing for his last few games. I mean, purely on the kind of defensive stuff, maybe Danso hasn't been that far behind or maybe even slightly better actually this season. I don't think Romero has had a particularly good season defensively. But, I mean, all the other stuff, both the kind of technical stuff, like his distribution from the back and those line-breaking passes that he can play, but as we kind of established no one else in the squad really can like his personality on on view from then this morning i've called it like his kind of main character syndrome it's the kind of thing i think you need in this kind of situation at least one player who's got that like probably got the belief that he's going to be the person who's going to turn all around like if you take that out i just if you look at the rest of the squad i'm just not sure there are too many players that will kind of grab the thing by the scruff of the neck so yeah i don't i like i said i don't i to this idea that it's a it's a blessing in disguise but i mean as for the kind of longer term legacy stuff i mean i think you tweeted this the other day like i do wonder how we'll look back on this era despite the trophy the kind of post post pochettino post kane era sort of in a bit of a mess and look he's highlighted that and like he's sort of within his rights to do that i guess i'm not sure i necessarily agree about the timing and the method of it um i think this suggestion and he's like become a liability is a little bit of a stretch.

16:07But I do also think when you're not a great team with a lot of great players, and this guy is your captain and you're probably your highest profile player, I think you need a bit more, like more of a cool head, both in terms of like the disciplinary stuff and like positioning and tactical stuff. Like even, I know people love it when he like picks up the ball and runs up the pitch. And he did it on Sunday before he went off. I do think like sometimes it isn't helpful. And I think everyone saw that clip from the Forest game where he basically kind of walked back. Like, I think if you're one player doing that in a settled, established, functioning team, I think that probably isn't as damaging, but I think when you're doing it as the central player in a complete shambles of a team where I just don't think it's conducive to getting results, and that's probably been borne out by what's happened this season.

16:55If you look at games like that Burnley away game where he scored the dramatic equaliser, but he also kind of got pulled out of position for I think the second Burnley goal. And I'm not saying that would be entirely on him, that goal, but he's kind of at least partly culpable for it. So for me this season, the good and bad have probably been fairly evenly balanced. I just don't see any way, you know, the way people in his orbit, I should say, have been kind of sounding off about his future. I'd be amazed even if Spurs stay up if there was any chance he's playing for Spurs next season. I just don't see any chance of that.

17:31Jack:Do you think we can still get good money for him? Because I'm just being interested to know how much the club actually want for him and then who would pay it because it seems as though Atleti had bulked a figure such as 50, 60 mil previously. But that's what he's worth in this market, isn't it? You'd say so, yeah. I mean, look, he's not the best centre-back in the Premier League as some people I think thought he was a year ago. But he's one of the best. And as I say, in a kind of better functioning team, I think you'd see a better player. And I think most kind of shrewd recruitment people in football and managers realise that, even if I do also see the kind of defects in him as a player.

18:13So, yeah, I mean, who knows? I mean, obviously what you really want is two or three clubs to be interested and very interested so you can start the bidding war. Whether it ends up being just him trying to kind of tout himself to big Spanish clubs again and them not being massively interested is a different question. I don't know actually I'll be honest I don't know what the market will be for centre-backs from those three teams in Spain I just don't I'm not massively convinced that they'll be like what's Chelsea's squad like I could see Chelsea like having a home for him well they have like 17 children that play at centre-half don't they I think that's their thing isn't it but yeah I mean yes you could see that what's his face centre-by-field his name Enzo thingy is leaving you would assume given their kind of international teammates yeah I don't know but it feels like that makes it less likely on my team Deleuze is nice but I've drawn a little bit there in a similar way to Romero has his spurs I don't know that just kind of makes you think maybe that wouldn't happen but I don't think he'd like bulk at the idea of going to another London club

19:16Jack:no no I don't think he'd care less which you know is I don't know if that's a him thing or if that's just a football thing now I guess on Romero you know I tweeted about it the other day saying that it's probably his last ever game for Spurs and I'm quite conflicted on him as a player and his legacy. But I think one of the main things I do hold on to, because I see it in myself, is I personally kind of feel like we've allowed the Sky narrative around him. And I know this starts to sound a bit boring and a bit tedious going on about Sky or against us, says the fan of every single football club.

19:55Jack:But it does feel like they've had Romero in their crosshairs for a while. Gary Neville, you know, generally doesn't have a lot positive to say about him. And it's, you know, it's even to the point that, you know, the brobby shove the other day, him being pushed into Kinski. The only person I saw having our back on it was Jamie O 'Hara, who, you know, you can generally rely on him to sort of have like a blowhard opinion about Tottenham because it's all part of the theatre of talk sport and everything like that. But other than that, you know, Sky literally wheeled out a referee to say that Romero was in the wrong for shielding the ball.

20:31Jack:I mean, it's almost farcical, isn't it? Yeah, I was really rattled by that. So in the commentary on the game, I mean, in the moment, they were kind of suggesting it was Kinski's fault. The uncertainty caused by Kinski had led this to happen, which I think is actually pretty gross, actually. Blaming the young guy who had been publicly humiliated two weeks ago, a month ago, whenever it was, in Madrid. you know kind of feeding off that narrative to suggest that this big calamity had been his fault when obviously it couldn't really be further from the truth um yeah i i mean obviously like there is a a massive kind of narrative around romero and his discipline and whatever and i i mean the way i've described this before is christian romero is probably like judged differently to other players but i think that's like a world that he has created that's like a standard that he has created I think there have been enough things that he's done, enough moments he's been involved in that have created that.

21:33It's not completely without basis. And there have been loads of times when he's been hard done by, but there have also been quite a few times where he's still been quite a few times he's gone away with stuff, even this season. I think the two games against Brentford, he could have been sitting off in both of them and wasn't. I do think it's more, if you look at, I don't know if this is the main thing Spurs fans have done on social media this season it's just like if Romero had done that it would have been a red card and I do think there is value to some of that where like the one at Old Trafford the red card he got at Old Trafford and I think you could probably see over the last three months since that happened there have probably been at least one every Premier League match round where you could say well that's the same if not worse and the player hasn't been sent off I mean that's important but like I say I do think he's kind of this is a world that he has created this is the standard that is like born of his uh kind of actions like i don't think he's like completely innocent in this like and he is like probably slightly hard done to but i also think like you know once you have like been exposed to that for however long surely you kind of start to like play by those rules and just get on with it and he, I think, has struggled to do that.

22:53Jack:In a classroom of sodas, most stay quiet. Then there's Mr. Pibb, sweet cherry, bold outbursts, the kind of flavor that gets attention. Bold kick of cherry. Hey, yo, Mr. Pibb. I mean, despite all his, should we say, you know, foibles, we're still talking about a guy that Captain does to our first trophy in 17 years, who, by all accounts, and I'm sure you'll know much more about this than I do, James, but by all accounts was pretty instrumental in that behind the scenes as well, was pretty important in terms of driving the culture, driving the narrative, driving home the cold hard truth to a lot of the players that they needed to shape up in order to win a trophy.

23:35Jack:They've been presented with a great opportunity to do so and they did it. There's man of the match in the final one player at a tournament as well, so there's man of the match in the final one player at a tournament as well. Any further than that, to be honest. so I think you know maybe when we're sort of saying good riddance to him and I know people are emotional because it's been a terrible season and yet at times it has felt like his loyalty has been not even split with Argentina directed towards Argentina the national team surely there's this his legacy isn't a completely negative one is it can't be no definitely not I mean also I think like you know the way these things work the more distance you get let's say he goes to Atletico or InterAware this summer and, you know, in three years' time, whatever's happened in between Spurs or a Premier League football club and, you know, whatever.

24:22Like, I kind of think you look back on it fairly fondly at that point. I don't think you'll be kind of still, you know, bugging your forelocks and getting upset about some of the mistakes he's made this season. Like, I kind of think that'll be gone. Like, to me, he hasn't had a great season, but there would probably be players in this group who I would have more dissatisfaction towards for a longer period of time than him. There are players in this squad who I think are more obviously

24:51played beneath themselves, within themselves for a longer period. Like I said, I don't think he's at a good season, but I don't really think that's through a lack of motivation or effort. Where some of the others I kind of look at and think, maybe.

25:03Jack:So let's move on to the jolly topic of boardroom executives posting on LinkedIn. in i mean look romero is quite a good segue because you know when river plate went down in 2011 the river plate ultras burnt the cars of executives of players set the stadium on fire um apparently showed up at the homes of various different execs and board members and stuff um for the club going down and yet at spurs i'm not advocating any of that by the way no but no at Spurs we have guys at a board not a boardroom level but say suits at Tottenham showing off about new websites or individual awards I know and people were saying this to me yesterday but I know we're emotional about this stuff I know that this doesn't have a say a direct impact on everything that's going on on the football pitch and Tottenham's fortunes this season but again the fact that say the cons person at tottenham internally isn't saying guys maybe we should hold off on this type of stuff until the summer when everyone's on holiday and watching the world cup and the anger has subsided slightly the fact we're sort of having to see this stuff and it's not the first example of this type of thing this season either it's it's pathetic isn't it well if you had rooted around on linkedin a little longer you would have seen i think they're actually currently uh searching for a new head of internal comps okay maybe that tells the story that's the problem um i mean for what it's worth so i mean there were two posts yesterday weren't there one by a guy on the football side and one from a guy in the kind of sort of digital realm and like you're like your football guy i mean you know he's just kind of blowing his own trumpet about winning some award in Denmark or whatever it was I mean whatever uh yeah your web guy I mean LinkedIn is LinkedIn right and like we've all kind of been on there we all know what it's like and all the cliches of LinkedIn are like incredibly accurate it is just like ludicrous like self-critification um and complete delusion but like the posts themselves I don't think despite the timing and despite the optics not being great like I'm kind of I kind of look past that relatively easily but the fact that he was then evidently surprised that there would be Spurs fans would find some beer a little bit annoyed and then was kind of nibbling at their responses rather than just kind of taking a like a dignified silence but that's the thing is there's no dignified silence on LinkedIn that's the problem I do I do wonder whether that does maybe this is kind of like stretching the point and extrapolating too much from a minor incident but it does feel like it maybe speaks like a slight lack of care like a slight lack of understanding about what this is all about and like you know working for a major football club like your customer it's not like the customer base isn't the same of the customer base for working for coca-cola or whatever like it's it's like a limit that you can grow it in a way but it is generally fairly limited like in the customers you've got you kind of do need to keep sweet it's like a different thing um so you can't really afford to just say we don't like this website you can fuck off like you kind of need you know to be a bit more malleable and yeah it was just it did strike me as a bit strange that uh he was going in like that and he was he seemed to be surprised that uh that wasn't going to go down well i mean maybe he's not a football guy he didn't i mean again maybe this is looking too much into it he doesn't like follow spurs on twitter so like you know i don't know whether he's like a football bloke or he's just like a tech guy and isn't involved isn't doesn't care and that's completely fair enough you don't need or want your tech people to be massive football fans necessarily so that would be fine but yeah i do wonder whether it was just he would just maybe caught out by that and didn't have the kind of sense to just kind of close the laptop and walk away it's just very strange isn't it to say we've made this great thing for the fans the fans don't particularly want it at the moment well they're wrong you know that's kind of the way the way it all felt and just a sort of the i think at one point he made a fairly sort of sinister thinly veiled threat to somebody about their workplace and i just it all just seemed a bit unsavoury again it just seems just ridiculous because i don't from what i saw anyway nobody was being particularly abusive to him they were being a bit sarky they were saying the sarcastic comments about a football club basically like yeah there wasn't anything dismissive of his work and i can imagine if you've sunk weeks months whatever into developing something and you show it off and everyone's telling you to piss off you know it's it's probably you say on a personal level it's it's not very pleasant but like you say you just have to have a better sense just close the laptop and and walk away from it don't you that's i don't know it's just it's frustrating because it's not the first example of it and i when i look at the website now so vinai van kateshin was supposed to be talking at the south by southwest london um branch of it it's actually disappeared now it's disappeared from their website so i wonder if he's pulled that because you know he was he was pictured with a with an arsenal badge as well he's pictured with an arsehole background i didn't see that i see i saw him on the website i didn't notice that i'll uh i'll send you at no one on that thank you you can have a look yeah we're going to send someone along to that and it's like it's insane i mean you can get like a media pass but it's insanely expensive that thing like thousands of pounds of the game yeah yeah i think i'm just kind of tired as a as a fan being told that this stuff doesn't matter that you're just being overly emotional that you're just being ridiculous because even if it's ostensibly like this stuff does matter you know spurs are spurs are a mess and that mess definitely definitely comes from a board and executive level so when you do have executives continuing to make mistake after mistake in public and seeing that play out and then just being told well you're just being an overly emotional fan it's because the football team aren't performing very well you're not taking that extra step to to maybe look into why the football team isn't performing very well but do you think these things are happening it's going to be obvious why i'm asking this i think do you think this kind of thing's been happening more this season from within the club because i do wonder and like the most culpable person for where we are now is is daniel levy but i do wonder whether like him and some of the people in his immediate orbit who left the club in september or just before were maybe if good for nothing else we're good at like making sure this stuff didn't happen and now we're kind of being exposed to the uh the the julox dog james you're getting the julox announcing them as a as a big partner and then they start mucking us off the same day it's i think this type of stuff can happen in business but definitely this is happening more this year but i i don't know are we just looking for it more are we looking for reasons to be to be more angry yeah it's easy to be more like if we were eighth in the league like that thing last night wouldn't have touched our sides with it you wouldn't have given two shits it wouldn't have it wouldn't have registered with anybody at all but it's because they're doing so badly that like this guy crying about the website feels like completely egregious when obviously like the reality is that it just isn't but you know it might be a stretch but i think in a way it also shows the the lack of nous to be able to react to a situation um because we can talk about january in the transfer window and Johan Langer saying that we don't want to panic.

32:29Jack:But again, we're here talking about another example of people, like you say, crowing about their successes when the club is failing in almost every measure. I mean, obviously a lot of these people don't work in and around the first team, men's or women's team or academy or whatever. But I think the way it really feels like I should work at a football club, and I've never worked for one, so maybe I'm being completely naive here and I'm completely wrong. But it does feel to me like whatever you do, if you work for a football club, should kind of be at least partly seen to kind of service like the football side of it.

33:05So you should kind of always have that in mind, whatever you're doing, even if like you do something completely different. So like to then kind of seemingly be so oblivious, seems a bit bad. But also at the same time, I do kind of think like we shouldn't hold this guy's social media to the same standards we would a player. Because that seems completely deranged to do that. So I'm kind of conflicted on the whole thing. but obviously I was very rattled by it.

33:26Jack:I'm definitely conflicting on it and I think the sort of the advice we gave to him, I think we probably need to take that in reverse in terms of like, yes, these things are quite annoying. Yes, within the context of the season and everything else that's going on, it makes it even more annoying. However, you know, the correlation causation thing, it's just shut the laptop and you don't need to get into an argument with a web developer on LinkedIn, you know? It's not going to make Tottenham not get relegated. massive fixture this weekend, Brighton, James, we say it pretty much of every single game this season, but is this the now or never game?

34:05Jack:Is this the one that, you know, we, we, we have to get something from the most, I think, informed team in the country. Yeah, that is a real, that is a real pain, isn't it? The fact that the way it's now against, yeah, the team who have won, I think it's five of the last six games in the game they didn't win was against Arsenal, where they were quite unlucky to lose. yeah I think it is I mean we've said this quite a few times this season but this is a must win game like I've been of the opinion for quite a long time that once Spurs win a game if they win a game that that will kind of lift such a big burden off the shoulders and everything will suddenly feel so different but we are kind of getting to the point now where there's like so little road left that you know you could win at Wolves next weekend and then you know if you draw at Villa or lose at Villa suddenly you're back in the bottom three a few points off with Chelsea away still to come and it might just not happen um I think they really need to win this game and they need to win at Wolves I think if they end up with 36 points after those two games like then it's way easier to see a way out of it but I think if they don't win this game especially because they could end up being like more than one week's worth of results adrift like I you know four plus points behind everybody else if it went wrong.

35:18It'll be looking pretty grim there. And the annoying thing is that the closest team are West Ham who kind of feel like they're the ones who are most likely to get a result in any given week, just because they've been playing so well for the second half of this season. You know, if it was Forest or Leeds, maybe you'd think, you know, they've both had a good win, both of them, in the last couple of games. But like in general, they've not really looked great in the last couple of months, whereas West Ham obviously have got four. It is hard to see. I mean, I don't know how you feel about this. I don't know which one of those three I feel like we're going to be able to drag in.